


leaving the light on

by bittybelle



Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apprentice Arc, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 08:50:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16238216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittybelle/pseuds/bittybelle
Summary: “No,” she hissed, her her grip so tight it tugged his lips into a canine snarl, her palm hot against his teeth. “You say nothing. I would speak with your captor.”Robin has been Slade's apprentice for two years. Starfire decides to do something about it.





	leaving the light on

They stopped coming after a year. Beast Boy went first, then Cyborg and Raven, nearly at the same time. He’d been expecting it; their punches and parries had gotten sloppy, and not from care of him. No more calculated misses, no more pleading, no more telekinetic restraints. Raven nearly cried the last time, holding him upright for Cyborg to interrogate. And Slade in his ear--or not in his ear, really, because he knew he didn’t have to say anything at that point. One ear full of static, the other full of _what is he doing, what does he have on you, why won’t you answer_. Not one even glanced at the decryptor Robin had attached to the vault’s keypad. Another brick of tech misplaced, another vial of ore purloined, another hoard of platinum or cobalt or tungsten or whatever else Slade needed for whatever he was planning. Who cared. Robin said nothing, Raven let him go, Cyborg turned his back. 

Starfire kept coming, though. He knew she would. She’d long stopped talking to him, stopped doing anything but hovering in the back, afire with--something. It probably wasn’t anger any longer. He couldn’t bring himself to indulge in the fantasy of it being sorrow. He imagined her in the living room, seeing the alert spring up. Maybe a video camera linked to the Titans mainframe filling the screen with his silhouette. Maybe the others closed the program, or just ignored it. Maybe there were arguments. Maybe someone cried.

This time, this night, she was there, warping the air pressure in the room with her flight. He pretended not to notice. He soldered the last piece of the bomb in place and straightened. It was a shame, honestly--he knew this lab, had helped Bruce funnel a grant its way. It was doing good work--something with mice, something with gene editing. God knew what Slade wanted wi--

A roar, a scream, a warcry rang out, and suddenly he was flying, falling, buffeted by the force of something too insistent to resist. He tumbled into a storage closet, flasks and beakers and boxes of pens clattering around him. He felt himself yanked upward, felt his back collide with the door. Starfire swam into view, thrust a hand against his mouth and fixed her eyes--her livid eyes, her eyes aflame with all the things he could not bear to name--on his.

“No,” she hissed, her her grip so tight it tugged his lips into a canine snarl, her palm hot against his teeth. “You say nothing. I would speak with your captor.”

He could hear Slade shifting in his chair, the scrape of his armor on granite. But he said nothing.

Starfire was not deterred. “We know what you are doing,” she said, her voice serrated. “And we know that we will stop you. We know. Listen to me--this is not conjecture. This is _certainty_.”

Slade turned up the volume in his earpiece. His voice filled the closet like something viscous. “Curious how you seem to be alone in this...certainty.”

Starfire’s body flared in response, arcs of heat making sweat bead on his temples. She ripped the earpiece from him, crushing it to glittering grit in her palm, then released him. He sagged to his feet. She wheeled on him.

“Is there a camera? Another--device?”

Robin swallowed. “There used to be but--he consolidated them into. Uh. That.”

“So we are alone?”

He nodded.

She buried her face in her hands. “They care,” she said, in a voice that tore itself free from her. “I could not bear the thought that you….might believe that they do not.”

“I know,” he heard himself say.

“And I will kill him” She lifted her face, fixing her eyes, like a garden on fire, to his. “I will not spare or merely incapacitate him. I will kill him.”

He said nothing. She sank to her knees, and he kneeled beside her.

“I love you,” he said, like a spool of ribbon falling from his lips. Unrolling, unrolling, unrolling down a slope. “I couldn’t say that before. I wasn't sure.”

“I...”

“I think maybe it was just--a crush. Then. It started when we met. But I love you now."

She said nothing. She covered his hand with her own.

“I will kill him,” she said. “I will.”

The bomb went off in the room beyond--a short, sharp blast. He’d designed it himself. When he didn’t, he knew Slade would put something worse in his hands.

Starfire opened the door. He did not stand until he heard the doors beyond sweep open, then shut. He retrieved the alloy Slade wanted. It took him only fifteen minutes to make it back to the warehouse, down the shaft, and through the five false entrances.

“Such tenacity,” Slade said, handing him a new communicator. “You and I have a taste for that in common.”

He nodded towards the view screens and they snapped on. STARFIRE, they said, and again and again and again, her name, her veins, her infiltrated body taking up every single panel. Her heartbeat was elevated. She was a little low on vitamin D. Slade left him there, his footsteps ringing down the hallway to his lab. He’d be in there all night, and in the morning there would something new to steal.

Robin closed his eyes. He opened them. He watched her vena cava contract and expand, the view so macro he couldn't see the probes. Just Starfire, four times: STARFIRE STARFIRE STARFIRE STARFIRE, so big and bright he cast no shadow.

“She’ll kill you,” he whispered. 

He left to join Slade in the lab. He didn’t turn off the screens.


End file.
